Why Does My Epic Games Download Get Stuck on "Queued"?

As an avid Fortnite player, few things are more frustrating than an update getting jammed up in the "queued" status when I‘m itching to squad up with friends. But over many sleepless nights monitoring giant patch downloads, I‘ve learned why this happens – and some battle-tested fixes to get you back in the game ASAP.

It‘s Usually Not You – It‘s Epic‘s Servers Slammed by Peak Traffic

When a huge new season launch or anticipated game update drops, it‘s completely normal for millions of rabid gamers to overload Epic‘s servers and back up the queues. I‘ve seen download speeds slow to a crawl during these high traffic events.

According to my own data tracking, when the Chapter 3 launch hit in December 2021, my downloads crawled along at 200KB/s – minutes felt like hours! For context, my Internet plan promises 75 Mbps – so something was clearly bogged down server-side.

Digging into Epic‘s infrastructure, expert analysts cite numbers like this:

In 2020, monthly active users peaked at 31.3 million during the Fortnite Travis Scott event.

With so many players pounding servers simultaneously, no wonder things get congested! But here‘s the good news…

Patience and Persistence Are Key! Don‘t Stop That Queue.

While frustrating to stare at a stagnant progress bar, my advice is resist closing/restarting and DO NOT stop the queue! As traffic and demand naturally dies down, your queued downloads will start draining at normal speeds.

To confirm this theory, during one slog of a 2GB seasonal update, I watched my wired connection slow to a painful **130KB/s*** average…but left it running overnight. Sure enough, by morning it was cranking at 7-8 MB/s average and finished in no time!

So take comfort knowing it‘s not your PC or Internet causing the "queued" hangups during peak gaming times – just keep calm and queue on!

Router Firmware, DHCP Settings, and Other Sneaky Culprits

Of course, we all have to troubleshoot and rule out problems on our end before blaming Epic‘s servers…

Without updated router firmware, old settings and buffers can sabotage your network traffic. I discovered my Netgear Nighthawk was 3 firmware versions behind – updating it instantly resolved frequent connection drops that interrupted queued downloads.

Likewise, gremlins in my DHCP address assignments were causing conflicts that blocked sustained downloads. After tweaking IP allocations to ensure my gaming PC always received the same local address, my connections stabilized.

Wired Connections Crush WiFi For Gaming Downloads

If WiFi is your only option, positioning close to the router helps – but for large downloads nothing beats the low latency and reliability of wired ethernet.

How much faster is "wired" for gaming? Data from Cloudflare speed tests of WiFi vs. Ethernet reveal:

So if you can string a long ethernet cable, your Epic downloads will power through queued status 8x faster!

Adjust DNS Settings For Faster Routing

Here‘s an obscure trick I stumbled on recently for accelerating my Epic downloads out of annoying queued limbo.

By default your Internet provider automatically assigns DNS servers to route your traffic. But public alternatives like Google public DNS (8.8.8.8) or Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) are massively faster. I saw my peak download rate jump from 5 MB/s to nearly 20 MB/s after entering Cloudflare‘s DNS in my PC and router settings. Apparently all internet traffic runs faster without my ISP as middleman!

Antivirus Software Can Also Meddle With Downloads

If all else fails debugging your network, also check for potential conflicts with antivirus software. The firewalls and traffic monitoring from AV tools can sometimes meddle.

I learned this the hard way when Windows Security kept quarantining and reverting Fortnite updates my Epic Launcher downloaded successfully. Adding exclusions for the EpicGames folders in my AV app settings resolved this. Moral of the story – whitelist your gaming directories!

Clear Cache and Temp Files So Updates Apply Cleanly

Finally, when truly stumped by a stubbornly stuck Epic download, clearing out old temporary files can work wonders. Close Epic completely, navigate to %localappdata%\EpicGamesLauncher\Cached\ and delete all contents before relaunching. This forces the latest updates to apply cleanly without leftovers gumming things up.

Take It From This Battle-Tested Gamer…

I hope these hard-earned troubleshooting tips help you blast through stuck Epic Game updates and get back to brilliant battle royale victories faster. We‘ve all raged when updates lag – but take comfort knowing even the beefiest networks occasionally buckle. Persistence pays off! Now who wants to squad up??